Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I got bad news in the end of December and decided to self-destruct for a wee while instead of writing. It slapped.
Now.
The stage is set. Drake has made it okay to hate clubbing. James Blake and the xx have made it okay to strip songs down to their essences rather than slathering them in layer upon layer of pop ear candy. The Black Eyed Peas have gone on hiatus, signalling the spiritual end of Large Stupid Pop Songs. The stage is set.
I actually remember the first time I heard "Royals". I was in the back of a van with my scout troop driving up the hill that takes you out of Hastings back towards London. I didn't really get it. Patsy said "This is the #1 song in the world, how have you not heard it?" I didn't know how to respond. Turns out only listening to At The Drive In and Texas Is The Reason does not keep you up to date with the world of pop. I get it now, though. I feel I've spoken enough about the trajectory of music in the early 2010s that I don't need to go over the sparseness, the minimalism, in any case she's covered Blake, and so on and so forth. I want to talk about Music For Teens throughout the decades, and why Pure Heroine doesn't work (for me) on that level.
The first, purest, form of Teen Music is doo-wop. Yes, bobby-soxers loved Ol' Blue Eyes, but he was fucking thirty-one when he released his first album. And of course teenagers have been creating music forever but the concept of Teenager is a mostly economic one forged in post-war America. You need to be at school with countless other kids your age, you need the freedom and the angst that comes from low levels of responsibility, and you need a certain level of disposable income to spend on cars and burgers and Penguins singles.
The most striking thing about doo-wop to me, is how desperate it is. It often reminds me of the Midwestern emo-ish music I spent a large part of my own teen years listening to in terms of its urgency and overwhelming emotion. When dude sings "Church Bells May Ring" he makes campanology sound like the single most important part of existence. This is the genre that was able to imbue nonsense words "hey-nonny-ding-dong-a-ling-a-ling-a-lang" or "rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-too" with more emotion than most bands are able to wring out of their entire discographies. When every single member of the Rainbows bursts into wordless wailing in the middle of "Mary Lee" it SOUNDS like how losing Mary Lee FEELS. Even more than its sister genre, rock'n'roll, doo-wop spoke to basically every ethnic group in America because they were all just kids feeling feelings incredibly intensely with basically no non-doo-wop outlets. It helps that doo-wop is perhaps the easiest type of music to make - there are only two chord sequences, and all you need is a voice and the ability to tap your feet or click your fingers.
This pattern continues throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the present day. Teenagers being mad or sad transcends all spatial, racial, and chronological boundaries. The garage rock bands of the 60s - your ? and the Mysterians, your the Sonics, your Deaths - simple music played with tons of angst. I don't think I particularly need to explain how punk and its myriad offshoots fit into this. Even something like the Soundcloud emo rap of the mid-2010s spearheaded by people like Lil Peep and XXXTentacion who were so troubled and angsty that they're both dead now, is kids making easy music with all the emotion God will allow.
Lorde isn't that. I picked doo wop as a reference point on purpose because "Royals" is very slyly a doo-wop song, with its simple clapped beat and multitracked Lordes harmonising with one another. And yet it rings hollow to me. Simply put, it's far too controlled to register as teen music to me. When you let sixteen year olds write songs they come up with shit like "I'm, I'm, I'm, so YOUUUUUUNG" or "I hate you... I want you dead" set to the sickest bass riff of all time, or, if you are VERY lucky, something as mature as "Will you still love me tomorrow?" Of course, comparing Ms O'Connor to perhaps the greatest songwriter of her generation, if not all time, in Carole King feels unfair, but Carole was just 18, not a professional, full-time songwriter at the time, and 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' was her first hit. "Royals" was 16-year-old Lorde's.
King spent her teenage years dating Neil Sedaka (swear down) at a normal Brooklyn high school and showing off her perfect pitch at her dad's parties in their normal Brooklyn house. Lorde spent her entire teenage years under the stewardship of a record label being shopped around different producers and songwriters in the hopes that she would produce something amazing, I guess. And she did! I've spent a lot of time complaining but Pure Heroine is a monumental achievement for a sixteen-year-old. Every synth is pristine, every melody memorable, every little lyrical kiss-off as self-confident as can be. But at the end of the day, I would also be very self-confident if I had God-knows-how-much label capital behind my songwriting. It wouldn't be fair to compare her to actual free-spirited bolts from the blue like Nirvana or whatever but even comparing her to her direct label-assisted forebears in the xx and James Blake I feel like all the edges and all the interest has been shaved off. Even the moments where things threaten to get heavy - the theoretically massive bass sound on opener "Tennis Court" for example - they are controlled and restrained (listen to the end of "I Never Learnt To Share" by Blake for some actual filth). The xx muffle their singing under layers of reverb on the first album partly for stylistic reasons and partly because they are unconfident teenagers from the Great South West who don't like their singing all that much. Lorde is upfront in every mix, loud and clear, in full control of her voice. "You're getting good at this" she whispers in an aside on "400 Lux" like a sassy Disney character. Romy Madley-Croft could literally never. At least 2009 Romy couldn't.
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| you already know wagwan |
Of course, this is the same bullshit argument I've been making for over two years - art is better when it isn't perfect, grit beats polish, Guided by Voices have to be better than Better Than Ezra, the Romantics trounce the Classicists, and sho on, and sho on. At this point, you probably have your own opinions on my pet concept, but I really do feel it holds here. Lorde is Ronaldo, a perfectly functioning banger machine, whereas someone like Mac deMarco has to be Messi, absentmindedly weaving webs of gold. I am unable to hear Pure Heroine as anything other than product - great product, but product nonetheless.
"You stupid prick. I'll alert the News Of The World, shall I? The headline can read: Music World Shocked As It Is Revealed Local Record Label Makes Product! God, I hate you."
Understandable, but: everybody my age absolutely loves the sket! I don't mean that we can't love products - I could murder a Burger King Bacon Double Cheese XL right about now - but that when it comes to music there's a certain SORT of artist that inspires near-religious fervent voice-of-a-generation Announce Grosseteste-y behaviour. Iconoclasts from generations past that blazed paths where none previously existed like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, I get it completely. A maverick that bent pop to his like Prince, a tortured soul like Cobain, absolutely. God help the nonce, but Aubrey Drake "Adam Johnson Did Nothing Wrong" Graham, he has a sound, an angle, a personality. I get why people build their personalities around him even though I find him annoying as all hell. Lorde, though? People completely lose their minds bawling their eyes out over "Ribs" and it's not even the best ribs-related song made by a teenager in 2013!
I just don't understand who could possibly relate to the concept of "Happy, Self Confident Teenager" this much. Group of friends she trusts, who understand each other; love interests that she actually not only talks to, but drives around with, and sasses; no angst whatsoever about her hometown; even when she is sad it's a gorgeous, wistful sort of sad where she thinks about the good times laughing with her buds in a responsible, mature way. WHO WAS LIKE THIS AT THAT AGE.
All of that is one thing, but I think what has really soured me on Lorde is not her fault; it's that she's a victim of her own success. In order to play the part of young upstart she wrote "Royals" as an anti-bling-era-rap kind of song - you know "Everybody's like 'gold chains, Grey Goose, trashing the hotel room'" and such - but that shit doesn't exist anymore. That shit BARELY existed at the time; like I said, the Black Eyed Peas had been on hiatus for a while, Drake and his early disciples, and Future and his early disciples, were taking rap in a far sadder, mopier direction, and the breakout rap star of 2013 was fucking Macklemore. In 2013, maybe "We're not caught up in your love affair" scans as a brave insurrection from the Normal Kids. In 2021 it sounds like a gloat.
Furthermore, she's incredibly good at what she does, and was very successful for her label, so of course she bred imitators of lesser import. Turns out I was wrong, and there are actually tons of headstrong teenage girls who have it all figured out - your Dayas, your Sigrids, your Alessia Caras to a certain extent, not to mention Billie Eilish. I just find it so funny that "Don't Kill My Vibe" by Sigrid is about your ideas being overridden in a writing session. The Lorde Strategy got so popular that it was now relatable to The Kids to be locked in a studio being forced to write catchy synthpop. We've all done it!
The absolute ultimate example is "Pretty Girl" by Maggie Lindemann. It starts with a bassline quietly pulsating a la "Tennis Court", the same fingerclicks as "Royals", the same "I'm more than you think" imagery, before bursting into a chorus that's scarily similar to "Roar". Lorde started as the antidote but was so quickly swallowed into the all-encompassing monogenre that it's impossible for me to believe she was ever owt else.
Also I listened to Melodrama and despite literally being named Melodrama that's another very tame effort. All she got from four years of being famous was Jack Antonoff's phone number. Sad! Many such cases!
Right, other important releases. Forgot to do this for the last year so they're getting chucked in here and all.
Chance The Rapper - Acid Rap - it's impossible to look at Chance as anything other than a huge meme at this point but in the second Obama administration he could do no wrong. Mr Bennett is an unfortunate example of the numerous artists that just have absolutely nothing interesting to say once their lives aren't falling apart at the seams. My favourite song off Acid Rap is 'Paranoia', by far the darkest song on the tape. It's about the shitty part of South Chicago he's from - Chatham if you're wondering - and what that place has done to his mindset (spoiler: it's made him paranoid!). On his next tape, Coloring Book, Chance has become the acceptable face of Black Chicago. It probably doesn't help that half the drill rappers that came up with him were fucking dead, but he seriously cut back on the LSD, found love, and was literally friends with the president. He was no longer living a life where it was easier to find a gun than it was to find a fuckin' parkin' spot, and the music showed it. He probably wasn't even parking his own cars anymore.
By the time we get to 2019's utter fucking embarrassment of a debut album, The Big Day, he obviously doesn't give a shit about rap, but I wouldn't have particularly wanted to listen to a COMPETENT album about how successful and famous and in love Chance is either. I don't think Chance will win people back because it would need him to be unhappy and druggy and in constant danger again. I don't want that for him. If we have to endure a hundred more "Hot Showers" to make it so there's one less family grieving their son in Chatham, I think that's about fair.
Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE - the album that launched a thousand sadbois. Did I mention PBR&B the other week? Oh, I did, in 2011. Anyway, Frank pretty much obliterates that sub-sub-genre and just produces a damn good R&B album, setting the bar for everyone else to attempt to cross. I've never been the biggest Frank fan, and I'm still not, but I'm always singing the little synth figure on "Lost", and "He said Allahu Akhbar, I told him 'Don't curse'" is still the greatest line of the decade.
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan - probably the warmest, least mad album from indie's resident fuckin nutcase David Longstreth and his then-band, including his ex Amber Coffman. I think Cohen and Hyden have mentioned this, but this album isn't particularly well remembered, though Dirty Projectors continue to release stuff at a clip with a reconfigured lineup. I think its mellowness works against it. Bitte Orca is the big "we matter now" record, the one that had a song that Solange covered, and the self-titled that followed Magellan five years later was best experienced as a juicy exposé on Coffman and Longstreth's relationship - choice lyric from opening single "Keep Your Name"? "What I want from art is truth, what you want is fame..." ...allow it, David! - so Magellan falls by the wayside, but it has good songs, good harmonies (what DP often do is called hocketing and it's a very precise, very difficult art, just as you'd expect from a mad genius), and excellent production above all else, to my ears.
Purity Ring - Shrines - Purity Ring, Grimes, CHVRCHES - indie-adjacent synthpop in the early 2010s was BACK, blud. La Roux and Little Boots and them were one thing but these newer groups were far edgier. Megan James of Purity Ring sang about mutilating herself for love and that, not just being bulletproof, it was mad. That soundtracked an advert for very.com! "Cut open my sternum and pull, my little ribs around you. Buy some shoes!" My dad loves this album, which is very out of character, but he also got super into Caribou that summer so he might have just been in a mood.
XXYYXX - I don't know how influental this truly was but this was perhaps my introduction to vaguely electronic stuff and it resonated with a lot of my friends when I twote about it the other day.
Anyone else remember XXYYXX
— william nylander fan account (@volvicstorm98) January 11, 2021
Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.a.a.d city - I don't really have anything to add here but everyone would get m.a.a.d if I just ignored it. Kendrick is good.
Tame Impala - Lonerism - this was the album that pushed them over the edge from "bunch of stoners from Fremantle or whatever" into "global superstar festival headliners" and deserves a spot here if only for that, even though I haven't listened to it lmao
Death Grips - The Money Store - what would autistic 20-year-old boys even do with themselves without Death Grips, man? The amalgam of math rock drummer extraordinaire Zach Hill, pure noise courtesy of Hill and Andy Mordin, and MC Ride's screaming/rapping just made perfect sense and the pure ASSAULT of their music would prove to be very influential on the artists that followed, in ethos if not necessarily in sound.
Savages - Silence Yourself - post-punk ruined British music.
PARTYNEXTDOOR - I actually quite like the guys that bite Drake hard - Bryson Tiller, PND, this one Kirko Bangz song - because as I've said I enjoy the sound but hate his voice. PartyNextDoor has a more traditional R&B leaning to his voice, and a more electronic bent in his production, though tape highlight "Break From Toronto" is a Miguel flip with the same kind of hazy 'Toronto' sound 40 and the Weeknd had already perfected at this point.
Deafheaven - Sunbather - metal's brief, brief brush with the critical zeitgeist in the early 2010s was all fueled by these guys, Liturgy, and what would come to be known as "blackgaze" - half black metal, half shoegaze. I personally appreciate what they're going for but think the metalheads were right on this one - blackgaze is stupid and attracted far too many posers to the otherwise insular BM scene. But from now until probably the end of time, Sunbather will come up on the 5x5s of /mu/tants that otherwise don't listen to metal at all, and for this it must be commended.
Disclosure - Settle - the missing link between Untrue by Burial and the big EDM that would come to characterise the mid-2010s. "Latch" really was everywhere for a couple years, and I think we have it to blame for Sam Smith's career. These guys and Rudimental had shit on lock in 2012/13.
Jai Paul - Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) - this is a weird one, because it technically came out in 2019, but everyone first listened to the leaks in April 2013. The effect of this album is something akin to the concept of Zeerust - an older vision of the future, as though Paul was submitting a project entitled "What I Think Music Will Sound Like In 2020", except instead of nonsense like this it's amazing amalgams of Prince and Bollywood, or Timbaland if he grew up under the A40 instead of in Virginia, and the future was indeed moulded in his image. Made somewhat tragic by Paul's subsequent six year hiatus from the music world, but he has now made peace with the leak - hence its legitimate release the other year - and has blessed us with a further single "Do You Love Her Now/He".
That's the end of the first "arc", as it were. Indie, R&B, pop, "electronic" stuff, hip-hop, it's all converging toward the monogenre I won't stop going on about. We'll get to the apotheosis of that soon enough, but we're gonna take a quick detour to the American underground before we do. Next week it's time to look at the emo revival.
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